V. I. Lenin

Theses On Production Propaganda[1]

Rough Draft

Written:18 November, 1920First Published:1928; Published according to the manuscriptSource:Lenin’sCollected Works, 4th English Edition, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965,Volume 31, pages 404-406Translated:Julius KatzerTranscription\HTML Markup:David Walters&R. CymbalaCopyleft:V. I. Lenin Internet Archive (www.marx.org) 2002. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of theGNU Free Documentation License

1. In connection with the R.S.F.S.R.’s
    military victories and its international position in general,
    production propaganda must now be given special prominence, and be
    accentuated and organised.

2. The leading newspapers,IzvestiaandPravdain the first place, should: a) reduce the space
    devoted to politics, and increase space for production propaganda;
    h) influence all the work of the Party and of Soviet institutions,
    in the sense of mobilising greater forces for production
    propaganda; c) endeavour to work systematically to place
    production propaganda on a nation-wide footing, and evolve
    extensive measures for its encouragement and improvement, with a
    special view to verifying the successes actually achieved in
    practice.

3. In just the same way, work should be
    systematised, extended and developed in selecting able
    administrators, organisers and inventors from the masses of
    workingmen and peasants.

4. Throughout the R.S.F.S.R. production propaganda
    should be placed under the direction of a single body, with the
    aim of economising forces and improving guidance of this work. In
    this, the greatest autonomy, both local and within each trade, is
    indispensable. Any marked success should be systematically and
    judiciously rewarded (bonuses in kind, etc.). Verification of
    successes to be organised impartially and competently.

5. The editorial hoard of a mass newspaper with a
    circulation of between 500,000 and 1,000,000 should be made the
    solo body guiding production propaganda.

Bednota[2]]is the right
    newspaper for the purpose.

It would be harmful to have a division into an
    industrial newspaper and an agricultural newspaper, since it is
    the aim of socialism to bring industry and agriculture closer
    together and unite them. In practice, the guiding role of the
    industrial proletariat both in the cities and in the rural areas,
    particularly in the urbanisation of agriculture and the
    electrification of the entire country, calls precisely for a
    single newspaper devoted to problems of production (and for a
    single body in charge of production propaganda) both for the
    workers and the peasants.

6. This guiding collegiate body should consist of
    five members representing: 1) the All-Russia Central Council of
    Trade Unions; 2) the Supreme Council of the National Economy; 3)
    the People’s Commissariat of Agriculture; 4) the Chief
    Committee for Political Education; 5) the Central Committee of the
    R.C.P. (or an editor-in-chief) This collegiate body and the
    newspaper should be attached to the All-Russia Central Council of
    Trade Unions (perhaps there should also be a representative of the
    Central Board for Vocational Training?).

7. This newspaper, devoted to matters of
    production, should be a popular one, in the sense of being
    understood by millions of readers, without falling into
    vulgarisation. The paper should not descend to the level of the
    uncultivated reader, but should work steadily-and by very gradual
    degrees-to promote his development. Little space-not exceeding a
    quarter of the total-should be devoted to politics. Top priority
    should be given to a single economic plan, to the labour front,
    production propaganda, the training of workers and peasants in the
    work of administration, to seeing that Soviet laws and measures
    established by Soviet institutions are given due effect, and to an
    extensive and properly organised exchange of opinions with the
    rank-and file reader.

8. Materials published in the newspaper or
    addressed to it, as well as all other kinds of material, should be
    systematically and periodically brought out in pamphlet or leaflet
    form and compulsorily supplied to libraries, as well as to
    factories and enterprises in the given field of production (the
    pamphlets and leaflets should systematise all the material
    relating to each particular branch of production). Together with
    manuals and reviews of foreign technology, this material should
    serve to spread vocational training andpolytechnicaleducation.

A more rational distribution of the newspaper, as
    well as of pamphlets and leaflets dealing with questions of
    production, amongalllibraries in the R.S.F.S,R. should,
    in particular, be the object of special attention.

9. It is indispensable that engineers, agronomists,
    schoolteachers, and also Soviet functionaries possessing definite
    professional qualifications, should be drawn into systematic
    participation in production propaganda (this in connection with
    the liquidation of illiteracy).

The organisation of lectures, talks, reports,
    etc.

Compulsory labour service on the part of all those
    who are able to acquaint the population with problems of
    electrification, with the Taylor system, etc.

10. The more extensive and systematic use of films
    for production propaganda. Joint work with the cinema section.

Soviet gramophone records. Displays of diagrams and
    cartograins at clubs, village reading-rooms, in streets,
    etc. Bills and placards to he displayed near factories, workshops,
    technical schools, etc.

11. The organisation, jointly with the
    People’s Commissariat of Labour and other institutions, of
    an inspectorate of production. The latter’s work to be
    co-ordinated with that of production propaganda, as well as with
    the work of instructors, exhibition trains and ships, and the
    like.

12. Extensive publicity for exemplary
    enterprises. Organisation of factory workers with foreign
    industrial experience-this to be done in special workshops,
    sections or groups, etc. Such workers to be utilised for the
    training of backward workingmen, for the dissemination of
    vocational-technical and polytechnical instruction, etc.

[1]This document served as a basis for the draft theses of the Chief
    Committee for Political Education, which were published inPravdaNo. 267 on November 27, 1920, under the heading
    “Production Propaganda (Draft Theses of the Chief Committee
    for Political Education)”. The question of production
    propaganda was first raised in connection with the discussion of
    the immediate tasks of economic development, at the Ninth Party
    Congress held from March 29 to April 5, 1920. But after
    Poland’s attack on the Soviet Republic, the brief respite
    came to an end and the questions of economic development receded
    into the background. Only at the end of 1920, after the signing of
    a preliminary peace with Poland and the defeat of Wrangel, did the
    question of production propaganda aimed at drawing the masses into
    the work of economic rehabilitation come up again with renewed
    urgency. Production propaganda, first suggested by Lenin, remains
    to this day one of the main tasks of the political, cultural and
    educational activities of the Party and the Soviet state.

[2]Bednota(The Poor)—a daily newspaper published by
    the C.C. C.P.S.U.(B.) from March 27, 1918 to January 31, 1931. On
    February 1, 1931 it merged withSotsialisticheskoye
    Zemledeliye(Socialist Farming).